Fr John Bollan: When snow cancelled Mass

Our collective effort to clear the snow was a metaphor for the Church today (Getty)

Like many people, I was seduced (and deceived) by a spell of pleasant weather a couple of weeks ago. There was a discernible heat in the sun, the daffodils were budding, and washing could be seen hanging out to dry – all harbingers of spring in these parts. Those of us who dusted off the patio furniture were soon to be exposed as overly optimistic fools, as the Beast from the East blew all these springtime hopes away in a blast of Siberian fury.

I jokingly refer to my Greenock parish as being “above the snow line”, but those words came back to haunt me as the church and the surrounding streets were held fast in the Beast’s icy grip. Indeed, you could almost see this grip, as jagged icicles hung from the eaves like the talons of Nosferatu.

Unlike the Big Freeze of 2010, which was more picturesque than perilous, this time it was nasty. The high winds dumped layer upon layer of dry snow on us and, worse still, caused it to drift. After a day of unremitting snowfall, my car disappeared behind a shoulder-high wall of the white stuff. Trapped in the house, I fell into doing what everyone else was doing, taking photos and videos of the “snowpocalypse” and posting them on social media. If nothing else, these served to signal to the outside world that I was still alive.

It is ironic that the term that has come to represent the fragility of pampered millennials – snowflakes – was also the cause of widespread panic among their supposedly tougher elders. Perhaps this was Mother Nature’s revenge for turning one of her most beautiful creations into a lazy cliché. A gang of snowflakes can cause havoc, let me tell you.

The depth of the snow and the poor conditions of the streets hereabouts meant that, for two days, the church remained cut off and there was no public Mass. I do not know when, or if, this has ever happened before. The social media platforms on which I was posting images of the Bow Farm tundra also served to get the message out that people should stay at home: the church was closed. That was not a decision taken lightly. We have devout octogenarians who would have strapped on snowshoes and harnessed huskies to get here, but at no little risk to themselves.

I found this enforced hiatus a little strange. With no one around the house for the best part of four days, I did go a little stir crazy. Although I had Jasmine, my trusty cocker spaniel to keep me company, I was conscious of the lack of human interaction. I would occasionally catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror and wonder at this dishevelled doppelgänger looking back at me, wandering around mid-afternoon in pyjamas carrying a bowl of custard or a plate of party food unearthed from the back of the freezer.

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